Opposition parties may co-opt Yashwant Sinha panel on Kashmir issue

A prominent member of the AB Vajpayee cabinet, Sinha, who is a former external affairs minister, is widely seen as not being in the good books of the Modi regime.

NEW DELHI: Opposition parties are considering the possibility of co-opting the high-profile civil society group, led by BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, which has conducted a series of fact-finding interactions with various stake-holders in Jammu and Kashmir and has come out with a set of proposals for renewing constructive dialogue to defuse the escalating tension in the border state.

Senior Janata Dal (U) leader Sharad Yadav will meet former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this week to discuss the proposal, since Singh is now heading the recently formed Congress Policy-planning Group on J&K. Yadav’s plan to meet Singh with the proposal to tap the Yashwant Singh team, sources said, follows the JD (U) leader having had a “positive discussion” on the matter with Congress president Sonia Gandhi last week.

Some other Opposition parties are also learnt to be on board regarding this. The Sinha panel too is learnt to be open to the idea of cooperation.

Incidentally, the move coincides with Sinha reportedly not getting an appointment with the prime minister for discussing and placing his panel’s suggestions on the J&K scenario. The other members of the Sinha panel include former chief of information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah, former Air Vice Marshal Shushoba Bharv, senior journalist Bharat Bhushan, among others. Incidentally, Yashwant Sinha had been a colleague of Sharad Yadav in the united Janata Dal days before he joined the BJP many years ago. A prominent member of the AB Vajpayee cabinet, Sinha, who is a former external affairs minister, is widely seen as not being in the good books of the Modi regime.

Sharad Yadav told ET, “I am planning to meet Dr Manmohan Singhji this week to request him that the Opposition parties, which are now extremely concerned with the increasing tension in J&K and also about the manner in which the NDA government is dealing with it, must also have broad-based discussions with equally concerned experts and citizens groups working on the J&K issue so that they can also give us valuable inputs. In this regard, I am planning to request Dr Manmohan Singhji to involve the Yashwant Sinha-led civil society delegation, which has done extensive work on the J&K situation and has made some creative proposals”. Yadav’s meeting with Manmohan Singh is tentatively planned for Tuesday.

Congress sources too indicated that they may be receptive to the option of a larger Opposition initiative on J&K involving working ties with “independent citizens initiatives” such as the Yashwant Sinha panel delegation.